Monday, October 11, 2010

Beyond this being a derivative and foreseeably byproduct of sexualizing teens like Mylie [Sic, sic, sic!] Cyrus and the whole Bratz phenomenon, the problem we have here is people like David Frum giving a 20 year old who goes on a gay teen forum to engage in fantasies about sex with underage boys a forum to espouse views that Frum and others characterize as conservative or libertarian, thereby giving him a legitimacy no one should.

In our day (even farther into the Golden Past of Erik's Imaginary Normal America than Erik goes) "teen" was pretty much defined by sex. The macro-we were interested in it, wanted it, & wanted more not long after. ("Adolescence, how does it work?")

Were laws against child-molestation unnecessary until the Disney Channel started pushing Miley Cyrus down America's throat? Did it take "the whole Bratz phenomenon" to bring attention to perverts? (Not that teens being horny has anything to do w/ sexual abuse. But to deny that teens are sexual, & then to imply that Bratz/Miley Cyrus [and the vast free-market capitalist entities that profit therefrom] are responsible for pedophiles & ephebophiles is bullshit.)

Not that we're defending Erik's main target, Alex Knepper. But was it really a Bratz doll that set creepy Alex on the road to whatever psychological problems he has? Doubtful.

Still, you can't help but love a cretin like Erikson, who will go on for a seeming eternity about timeless values from G-d, his side is right, liberals are wrong, & indecent, & immoral perverts, & everyone who's normal agrees w/ him. But put an 8x10 of Miley Cyrus or a Bratz doll in front of their home-schooled junior Christians & their whole morally superior cultural thing collapses w/o a fight. You've got a brand loyalty problem there, Erik. Is it branding, or is it just that the product is no damn good? And just how large a government are you willing to have to enforce your idea of normal, since all your lies have failed?

Also: We're sure Mr. Erikson had a long & harsh piece on the National Review Online & its Gallery of Sickening Old Pervs (John Derbyshire). Didn't he?

There’s a young conservative writer on the rise – published at Big Hollywood, NewsBusters, and the Daily Caller, and personally supported by former National Review columnist and former Enterprise Institute fellow David Frum — and he’s a defender of pedophilia.

Alaska U.S. Senate nominee Joe Miller (R) said that "he will not be answering any more questions about his personal background for the remainder of the campaign," the Anchorage Daily News reports.

Said Miller: "We've drawn a line in the sand. You can ask me about background, you can ask me about personal issues. I'm not going to answer."

Miller "has faced scrutiny in recent weeks on a number of fronts involving his personal background, including that his family received low-income medical benefits, low-income hunting and fishing licenses and that his wife drew unemployment benefits. Miller has been critical of such programs at the federal level, saying the nation suffers from an 'entitlement mentality' and is on the brink of bankruptcy."

U.S. Senate candidate Joe Miller, accompanied by his wife,
Kathleen, talks to the press in a press conference at the
Dena'ina Center in Anchorage on Monday, Oct. 11, 2010.
BILL ROTH/Anchorage Daily News

What the hell else is this hypocrite & whore* hiding? Or is this just an illustration of "Stupid voters, you have no right to know who represents you?" No official position on the Seventeenth Amendment (Sure would make it easier on ol' Joe though, just having to buy a few votes in the statehouse, instead of selling a whole lotta rubes on himself.) on his virtually content-free issues page. Candidates on the "Lizard People Are Here! NOW!!" ticket have more info on their issues than this sad joke. (Amendment-wise, he does admit to being a Tenther.)

Got a digital camera, flip video camera, Blackberry, or cell phone that shoots video? Put them to use to on election day. In the meantime, leave suggestions in the comments as to how to help eliminate voting fraud this November.

Say, maybe some African-American Tea Partiers could assuage their desires to be on camera by putting on a pair of boots & swinging a stick in front of a polling place somewhere for some of their camera-wielding fellow patriots. Just an idea. Don't forget your beret!

[A] state GOP official alleges that voters in the 7th Congressional District have been getting a push poll in which they are told about the murder charges brought against Pantano in 2005 -- which were ultimately dropped.

Charges dropped? Two letters: O.J. Who didn't leave a sign at the murder scene.

In Iraq in 2004 Pantano shot two unarmed Iraqi prisoners, unloading up to 60 rounds, and then placed a sign next to their bodies with a Marine slogan, “No better friend, no worse enemy.”

Former Giuliani speech writer & would-be Mugwump at the Daily Beast has a Wingnut Index. A scrupulous attempt at being fair & balanced, by pretending there is an extremist left of any significance in crypto-fascist America.

In the 10 areas measured, we have reached for binary criteria whenever possible, such as whether the candidate subscribes to the conspiracy theories of being a "birther" or a 9/11 truther, or whether they have compared their political opponents to either Nazis or communists. Evidence of either Bush Derangement Syndrome or Obama Derangement Syndrome was included in the general category of fearmongering.

Considering most Tea Partiers are willing to call anyone a commie, Nazi, fascist or socialist indiscriminately, how binary can this criterion be? Birth/Truth? Two sides of the same coin? Doesn't stop there; a comparison is drawn between the Family Research Council & AFSCME.

Hyper-partisan, special-interest-driven voting records were taken into account when possible—for example, candidates who received a 100 percent rating from the Family Research Council or a 100 percent rating from what could be considered their opposite interest group on the left, the AFS ratings by the Association of Federal, State, County and Municipal Employees. (In the interest of full disclosure, Barbara Boxer's 99 rating was rounded up for inclusion.)

Could be considered their opposite interest group? Well, if ASCME were a coven, maybe. If not, what the fucking hell?

RINO hunting and DINO hunting are Wingnut hobbies and as one measure of that impulse we added points for those backed by the Club for Growth or its comparably small liberal corollary, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee. Both groups target centrists in their own party.

Comparably small? We can only assume it's liberal media bias that gives the Club for Growth about 4,610,000 Google results, & the Progressive Change Campaign Committee about 411,00.

Then he just gives up & admits he's full of shit.

Despite our attempt to be genuinely fair and balanced in the selection criteria, it was perhaps inevitable that this list would lean decidedly right this year. Parties out of power can more easily be dominated to angry ideological absolutists absent the responsibilities of governing. The conservative populist movement is now surging within the Republican Party and winning primaries. Populists in the Democratic Party may be loud but they are not that influential in terms of actual representation in Senate candidates (this will change when we look at Congress next week). For example, while three GOP Senate candidates rank among the birthers—and one of them, Maryland's hapless Eric Wargotz, didn't even make the list—there are no Democrats running for Senate who embraced truther conspiracies in the Bush era. "Those are the facts," as H.L. Mencken once said, "and I'm sorry to have the Babylonian indecency of printing them."

Sunday, October 10, 2010

We were awfully excited to see our name on memeorandum, until humorless strangers showed up & picked on us.

Then we noticed The Last Tradition on memorandum, & consoled ourself w/ knowing that if the Just Another Blog™ aspect of our imaginary empire doesn't hit the big time (And thanks to Thers for letting us borrow his megaphone-equipped soapbox. Help his ass out!) it ain't no thang.

Finally we have a man's man with the courage to espouse a belief that is supported by Christianity, Islam, and Judaism!

All three are constituent protected faiths that all Americans are allowed to participate in.

Carl Paladino and millions of others in this country have a right to believes and say that homosexuality immoral, dysfunctional, and wrong.

But, of course the torrent that will come his way from the postmodern-cultural relativist who don’t believe in absolute truths, but believe that carbon is a pollutant, speaks for itself.

Crux of the artful parody/actual loon decision: "All three are constituent protected faiths that all Americans are allowed to participate in."

And one can no longer judge a web log by its links, because intentionalism has raised its ugly head. This guy must be kidding.Maybe not. Someone else has run the pastor & his poor broody hen wife into the ground. And salted the ground.

As a public dis-service, we advise that Parts I & II of an interview w/ Dinesh D'Souza are available at The Daily Tucker. We'd as soon not type another word (On D.D'S., for sure, other stuff ...) but this unfortunate phrasing caught our attention during a quick scan of Part I:

DD: I think Obama’s vision for America is, well, you could call it, “soft socialism at home, and impotence abroad.”

Saturday, October 9, 2010

Locals go north, suck against cross-state rivals ... Why do the Yankees hate America? The Evil Empire of Eastern Elitism just swept those nice boys from the Mid-West, whichever faceless industrial wasteland surrounded by rednecks they were from ... They did it last yr. too ... Be fair, let the Heartland win! ... It's rumo(u)red that iceball, played in the frozen hells of Canada, Chicago & Beantown has begun its season ... Like, what. EVER ... In a random & meaningless universe, what could be more random & meaningless than the sporting life? You could look it up ... Hell, it's a lot easier to look it up now ... So what are you complaining about?

Reason, as always (Or not, our beautiful mind can't take much of it, we really have no idea what they do.) abuses language to make every gov't. action criminal.

The setup: a couple in New Hampshire had their baby stolen from them by government agents--which I think most normal humans recognize as one of the most wrenching, horrific, violative of one's integrity and liberty things that a state, or anyone, could possibly do--whatever the reason for it might be.

Horrors! The only things more integrity-violative (Have to have it before it can be violated!) to the freeman's mind would be actually being in jail, himself, or ... what if they confiscatedtook by force one of his precious guns? (Easy, freeman, just a hypothetical. Breathe into that paper bag if you started hyperventilating.)

The affidavit about the snatch lists ongoing charges of child neglect against the mother regarding her other two children, and charges against the father involving weapons possession without a license, as among the reasons for the kidnapping.

[...]

(Whether anyone thinks an act of violence as severe as taking a newborn from parents is justified by these sorts of procedures is the big question)

(All boldface ours.)

We can only speculate as to reaction Reason might have had to the couple (whose baby was apparently thrown in a cattle car & shipped to the East) if they weren't bitter gun clingers. We could have been treated to a dissertation on the nerve of societal parasites, moral & physical inferiors, & the other standard droning.

[The father] said he was unemployed and collected disability because he is blind in his left eye from a childhood accident. He said that Taylor suffers from "stress-induced seizure disorder" and that complications during her pregnancy required him to tend to her almost constantly.

Honestly, should people on welfare be allowed to reproduce? What's the likelihood that Ms. Taylor's spawn will be on the welfare rolls the minute they're out of their foster homes?

A (Republican) Senate candidate has been called a witch. A (Republican) gubernatorial candidate has been called a whore. And now... a — guess which party? — House candidate is tarred with Nazi.

No, Professor, the (Republican) Senate candidate called herself a witch. The (Republican) gubernatorial candidate was not called a whore, it was wondered if she (a blatant & obvious whore) should be labeled as such. And then it was decided the truth should be suppressed.

As far as "tarred with Nazi," was a gun held to candidate Iott's head to force him to put on Waffen-SS uniforms & pose for pictures? Not that Nazi is such a pejorative these days. After all, they fought Bolshevist Communism, as explained at The Atlantic, and isn't that what's important?

The website makes scant mention of the atrocities committed by the Waffen SS, and includes only a glancing reference to the "twisted" nature of Nazism. Instead, it emphasizes how the Wiking unit fought Bolshevist Communism:

Nazi Germany had no problem in recruiting the multitudes of volunteers willing to lay down their lives to ensure a "New and Free Europe", free of the threat of Communism. National Socialism was seen by many in Holland, Denmark, Norway, Finland, and other eastern European and Balkan countries as the protector of personal freedom and their very way of life, despite the true underlying totalitarian (and quite twisted, in most cases) nature of the movement. Regardless, thousands upon thousands of valiant men died defending their respective countries in the name of a better tomorrow. We salute these idealists; no matter how unsavory the Nazi government was, the front-line soldiers of the Waffen-SS (in particular the foreign volunteers) gave their lives for their loved ones and a basic desire to be free.

Historians of Nazi Germany vehemently dispute this characterization. "These guys don't know their history," said Charles W. Sydnor, Jr., a retired history professor and author of "Soldiers of Destruction: The SS Death's Head Division, 1933-45," which chronicles an SS division. "They have a sanitized, romanticized view of what occurred."

Althouse's reaction?

A decent journalist would have ascertained how many war reenactments Iott has done and which roles Iott played in them. What is the proportion of Nazi roles he assumed compared to the number of times he played WW2 American infantrymen or paratroopers? Who decides, when war reenactments are done, which side somebody plays? Give me a realistic picture of what participation in war reenactments is really like so I can assess what Iott did.

We can advise the Prof. on which side somebody plays: The side for which they have the uniforms, weapons, accessories & so on. Which they have chosen/made/purchased all by themselves. Quite possibly w/ an eye to their ideologies. "I'm not a Nazi, but I play one on weekends, in proportion to my other fantasies."

Perhaps Professor Althouse could ask one of her students to show her where the U. of Wisc.'s English Dep't. is, & once there she could ask a T.A. for advice on dictionary usage, the commonly-understood meaning of words like "smear," &c. Then, one day, someone could have an actual discussion about reality w/ the Professor.

We'll be holding our breath awaiting some high dudgeon from Her Hypocritical Majesty concerning the idiotic but actual smears directed at President Obama. Makes us wonder if her real complaint is that what she's decrying as smears is the truth?

Who's behind this tripe? We'll let people who give a shit dig into the money, but it all looks like a nice gig for one Virginia (Ginni) Thomas [...] new social entrepreneur and the Founder and President of Liberty Central, Inc. (Founder, Pres. & sole proprietor, judging from the biography section. That must make it easier to put the grassroots funding directly to Ginni's offshore tax haven, or the household account.)

Why does "social entrepreneur" make us think of the madam in a whorehouse, anyway?

And what is Liberty Central, Inc., beyond its obvious function as a cash conduit to "proud Nebraskan" (One of her "professional accomplishments." So proud that she lives in Virginia.) Ms. Thomas &, just maybe, possibly, a cash conduit to Mr. Thomas (first name: Clarence) as well, who has a life-time wing-nut welfare appointment in the judicial system?LibertyCentral.org is a non-profit, non-tax deductible organization which will have a user-friendly, entertaining, and educational website designed to provide an online community for visitors to preserve freedom and reaffirm the core founding principles. Their (her) own shorter: "Where like-minded people gather to preserve freedom in America." A gathering of the "Don't confuse us. We know what to think" gang. Here shall they gather, to be ill- & mis-informed by Ms. Thomas & her interns.

So, the wife of a Supreme Court justice is receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars from secret donors -- who may or may not have a case before the high court -- she doesn't have to disclose.

Does this seem kosher to anyone? Unknown entities are generously financing the work of a Supreme Court justice's spouse, and the public has no idea who's writing the checks, where the money's going, whether it might create a conflict of interest, etc.

Benen & The NYT: Better late than never. Put down the Drudge & pick up on someone who understands what the fuck is going on, Mainstream Media Villagers!

Friday, October 8, 2010

They all just awoke from a long winter's nap or something. You won't get a better admission that fear of The Other is driving them than this. No "Oh, I was opposed to Bush's spending & wars" or any such excuses.Also, please, what do our liberties & freedoms "stand for," exactly?

Ha ha [extra-evil laugh], human mother-rapers have unthinkingly yet royally fucked up every aspect of existence they possibly could, from culture to wealth distribution. Now The NYTinforms us of other parts of the physical/natural world that have been brought to the brink.

Q.

What do you see as the biggest risk from current trajectories for altered nitrogen flows?

A.

Nitrogen is one of the “big six” elements that is required for all life. The other five are hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, phosphorus and sulfur. These six elements make all the building blocks – the proteins, nucleic acids, fats, starches. We can’t live without fixed nitrogen – and with 2 to 2.5 billion more mouths to feed in the next 40 to 50 years, we need to fix more nitrogen to grow food. In the end, the nitrogen we use winds up in rivers or in the atmosphere. The rivers flow to the oceans, where the fixed nitrogen allows algae to bloom and then die – and leads to massive fish kills. In the atmosphere, a portion of the nitrogen winds up as nitrous oxide – laughing gas – which is not only a greenhouse gas that is 300 times more potent that carbon dioxide, but also destroys ozone, the gas that keeps us from getting more of a dose of UV radiation. So, this isn’t a joke – we’re talking about humans polluting the oceans and atmosphere at their peril.

One of the things keeping us going is the hope of watching when the saturated fat-saturated bodies of millions of Americans spontaneously combust, burning down their ticky-tacky box houses & releasing the toxic gases in the plastic crap w/ which they surround themselves, resulting in a vast continental conflagration.

Had to hear this w/o a voice-over artist shilling boner pills on top of it. We'll even share.Viagra® our ass, you need nothing beyond a mojo hand & some John-the-Conquer root. A conk job that doesn't quit won't hurt either.

Sonrise Church Pastor John Reed told The Associated Press on Thursday that the Nevada Democrat has devoted his political career to advancing the interests of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Reed said the Mormon Church is a cult in part because it swears members to secrecy and pretends to be Christian, but doesn’t accept Jesus Christ as its one savior.

Angle’s campaign distanced itself from Reed. Spokesman Jarrod Agen says that “as a Christian, Sharron shares the same values with other active Christians, including those of the Latter Day Saints community.”

Reid’s campaign has called for Angle to respond directly to the pastor’s comments.

We are bent over (almost doubled-up) w/ amusement at one of these assholes calling out the magic underwear assholes for not being sufficiently Jesus-y. Whoever said "I like your Christ but not your Christians," or "I wish Christians were more like their Christ" or however the fuck-tuck-tucking hell it goes had that pegged. Yoga, anyone?

She’s 27 and had a baby at some point and this changed everything. “I said to myself, enough. I vowed, ‘I will protect Ella and all the babies like her in the First District of Virginia and throughout the country.’”

This would explain Obama’s fierce allegiance to the federal government.

Fierce allegiance? He did swear an oath or something, didn't he? Like a couple months after he was elected to be the president of the federal government, right? Fiercely allegiant, yet ready to sell us out to his MuslimKenyan brothers on a moment's notice! For reparations.

For instance, there is a lot of speculation now about whether Obama will be a centrist after the midterm election, like Bill Clinton became after 1994. My theory says that he won’t because he cannot. Clinton was largely a non-ideological guy. If Obama came by his liberalism in the faculty lounge, then sure, he can see it hasn’t worked and he can modify it. But if Obama got his formative ideas when he was very young, and if they are the result of his traumatic relationship with his father, then they are built into his psyche. He’s not going to change because, to his anti-colonial mindset, meeting the Republicans halfway is a form of sellout. He would be untrue to his principles if he were to cut deals with a group that he considers to be the neocolonial party.

Say what you will, little Barack must've been pretty damn smart get those formative anti-colonial ideas when he was very young. And BHO, Sr. must've spent a lot of time shoving Frantz Fanon down the throat of a child who was two when Sr. cut out. We'd love to hear much more about the psychology of traumatic parental relationships & the embrace of anti-colonialism. And we should all get a laugh from the idea that not meeting the Republicans "halfway" (Oh, sensible, split-the-difference compromise, wherefore art thou?) is the fault of anyone but the obstructionist & neo-colonialist Republicans.

Don't think for a moment that vain arrogant narcissist Obama is the only anti-colonial elitist here. If elitists are "people who think they're better than everyone else," Kathryn Jean certainly thinks D'Souza is better than you know who.

LOPEZ: If you have so much in common with Barack Obama, how did you wind up as a conservative intellectual, now president of an evangelical university?

D’SOUZA: Obama remains frozen in his father’s time machine. His anti-colonialism is the anti-colonialism of Africa in the 1950s: state confiscation of land, confiscatory taxation, and so on. My anti-colonialism is the anti-colonialism of India in the 21st century. Recently, the Indian prime minister, Manmohan Singh, gave a speech at Oxford in which he gave two cheers for colonialism. He said India is growing fast and is on its way to becoming a superpower. How? Because the Indians speak English, they have technology, they have universities, they have property rights, they have democracy. And why do they have these things? They got them from the British. Now, Singh could never have said that a generation ago. But the world is changing. Poor countries today have a better solution to the legacy of colonialism. They are able to use their cheap labor costs to make what other people want to buy. This is what the economist Thorstein Veblen once called “the advantage of backwardness.” So the difference between Obama and me is that I have embraced the new world of globalization and free trade, and he continues to be haunted by his father’s ghost.

Oh, holy fuck, just put a sock in it already. Meet the New Anti-Colonialism: Globalization & free trade, & a chance at exploitation by a corporate entity rather than an emperor. D'Souza might try thawing himself from the Portuguese colonialism his ancestors embraced. And what is evangelicalism but religious colonization?

Degeneration into "Go fuck yourselves, you insufferable buffoons" territory comes not long after.

LOPEZ: Why does Barack Obama look so angry on the cover of your book?

D’SOUZA: Obama looks angry on the cover because he is angry. The cover image captures Obama’s suppressed rage and is true to the argument of the book.

Central to his thesis as well.

So there is a sublimated rage in Obama that is reminiscent of the rage of Barack Obama Sr., a man who often sat outside his hut and went into drunken rages against the West for denying him the fulfillment of his anti-colonial dreams.

This too is central to the thesis. After all, w/o the West, Obama Sr. wouldn't have had to have any anti-colonial dreams.

Middle-class sheep, stop deluding yourselves that you'll be safe from traditional pre-regulatory labor practices much longer. You'll be so fucking happy to have work you won't dare to complain, & even if you sued & won you'd never collect a dime.

State prosecutors filed a multimillion dollar lawsuit Monday against the owners of celebrity dining favorite Koi for allegedly exploiting workers at eight carwashes, including five in Southern California.

The lawsuit filed in Los Angeles Superior Court claims members of the Sikder family routinely denied workers at the carwashes that they own minimum wage and overtime, failed to pay wages owed to those who quit or were fired, denied rest and meal breaks and created false time sheets.

All well & good that these wanna-be feudal barons are being sued, but why so long?

The businesses in Fair Oaks, Folsom, Irvine, Laguna Hills, Laguna Niguel, Santa Monica, San Ramon and Venice operated for years without licenses from the labor commissioner, which are required under California law, according to the state attorney general's office.

[...]

"While Koi served up yellowtail tartare and Kobe beef carpaccio to Hollywood celebrities, the restaurant's owners routinely denied wages, breaks and overtime pay to workers at their unlicensed carwashes," Brown said in a statement.

An example cited by state prosecutors was the case of Sergio Diaz-Esquivel and Juvenal Diaz-Esquivel, who quit their jobs at the Wash & Go Hand Wash in Irvine after not being paid overtime or for all their hours, despite working seven-day weeks.

In August 2007, they obtained judgments totaling $14,708.24, including penalties for the car wash's willful failure to pay them their wages. The car wash still has not paid them.

Brown said it was in sharp contrast to the money the family earned by owning and operating Koi, a high-end Japanese restaurant with locations in West Hollywood, New York, Las Vegas and Bangkok.

"The restaurants gross millions of dollars annually and are regularly featured in gossip magazines and on television shows, including HBO's 'Entourage,' because of their celebrity clientele," Brown said.

But I stayed in the church of capitalism, determined to hear what wisdom headliners Colin Powell, Rudy Giuliani, Dan Rather, Steve Forbes and Terry Bradshaw would dispense.

[...]

“I need a woman with money,” Bradshaw cackled, noting that he was a 62-year-old mama’s boy with three ex-wives. He seemed more like a man who could use some advice rather than one paid for giving it.

“I’ve never really motivated anybody,” he announced cheerfully.

The former Steelers quarterback grumbled that quarterbacks like Peyton Manning and Donovan McNabb get paid millions more than he did to follow plays dictated by coaches.

After noting that “Jesus is my savior,” he shared this life lesson with the would-be entrepreneurs: When your receiver is about to be tackled, “Keep it simple. Chuck it to him anyway.”

Are these suckers who blew $9.95 for the privilege of being pitched more seminars in inspirational horsecrap ("Then came another sales pitch from a guy who said he went from being a homeless drug dealer to the 'world’s No. 1 Internet wealth entrepreneur' with a $2.4 million estate in Texas. He offered a course at an airport Marriott valued at $11,226.90 for a bargain $29.") the small business start-ups that will get America working again, the minute deeper tax cuts are passed & the moneybags start letting their cash trickle down?

Not that the moneybags would let any of it loose, of course ("Mine!!") but seeing bible-thumping patriots applying the clap harder approach to bizniz would provide some comedy relief during the plunge to the abysswind-down of all meaningful economic activity in our future.

How did I miss this? Inmentioning, earlier this afternoon, that Christine O'Donnell had claimed in 2006 to have secret-document proof of China's master plan to conquer America, I left out the context. Several readers have helpfully pointed out that she made the remarks in a primary-campaign debate -- and directed them to a primary opponent who beat her (handily) and another candidate (narrowly) to win the Republican nomination. He is a Harvard Law School graduate and Temple University Law School professor namedJan C. Ting. That's him:

Stay classy, Christine!

And, as might be expected, C.O'D. has an odd definition of "classified." Did the Pope tell her not to reveal her sources?

Monday, October 4, 2010

Breaking News Alert The New York Times Tue, October 05, 2010 -- 1:05 AM ET
-----
Bank of Japan Cuts Benchmark Interest Rate to As Low As 0%
The Bank of Japan on Tuesday unexpectedly cut its benchmark interest rate from 0.1 percent to a range of 0 to 0.1 percent. The unanimous decision came after a two-day meeting of the bank's nine-member policy board and is the first change of Japan's key rate since December 2008.

The move had important symbolic impact, signaling the bank is willing to take action to spur the ailing economy despite the risks of deflation from further cuts in interest rates.

Tokyo's Nikkei stock market average rose by more than 1.5 percent after the announcement.Read More

Typed it before, will type it again: the Official Position of Just Another Blog™ is in complete & absolute favor of deflation. Your cash is nothing but trash anyway.

Why don't we hear about this sort of crap sooner? (Because we're asleep during the hrs. of standard activity. Next question.)

So that's how it looks in color.

This morning's event was dedicated to Art Gilmore, who passed away last month at the age of 98 and was a broadcast professional, known for the 156 episodes of "Highway Patrol" (1955-59) he narrated. Actor Broderick Crawford, who played CHP Chief Dan Mathews on the show, was also honored at his Walk of Fame star.

We can't even remember if we were aware of Gilmore's death, but we've been watching Highway Patrol religiously since we found it's being broadcast weekday mornings on thisTV.

Mr. Gilmore, of course, served in Jack Webb's repertory company as well as his Highway Patrol gig.

Yes, the Beverly Hills P.D. drives plenty of SUVs. What did you expect?

A few wks. ago we happened to see several old-style LAPD vehicles (One of them a '70s station wagon w/ LAPD markings, not visible here, & a couple of older ones.) parading up La Brea, but we weren't quick enough to extract & use the camera. Screwed again.

Scientists Blame Laptops for "Toasted Skin Syndrome"

While 'toasted skin syndrome,' has traditionally been associated with proximity to ovens or extreme heat sources, a handful of new studies link the "sponge-patterned skin discoloration" to a new cause: lazy laptop users. Over the past six years, medical journals have covered at least 10 cases of "toasted skin" resulting from users who don't move their laptops in spite of the machines overheating. In an article published Monday, researchers relayed the case of a 12-year-old boy whose leg went spotty after months of playing video games. "He recognized that the laptop got hot on the left side; however, regardless of that, he did not change its position," the authors wrote. While the condition is mostly harmless, it can potentially lead to skin disease and infertility in men. To avoid scalded skin, scientists have a simple recommendation: Move the laptop when it gets hot.

Sunday, October 3, 2010

Can't decide which is more awful, irksome, tedious & banal, the political scene (as portrayed in the world of bloggery) or the sheer inane dull of our hideous existence (w/ photos & recordings) in a world of objects that want everyone to suffer.

Sweet release of death (The death of all political types. We aren't going anywhere soon. Hell, we're going nowhere at an astounding rate.) we await your releasing these two morons from their earthly bonds.

"To those who say we should focus on fiscal issues, instead of the right to life, I say 'what is more fiscally responsible than rolling back this administration's effort to expand funding for abortion at home and abroad?' What is more fiscally responsible than denying any and all funding to Planned Parenthood of America?"-- Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN), quoted byThe Hill, criticizing moderate Republicans for focusing on "public policy alone."

Manly.

And CNBC's Larry Kudlow reveals more about himself & some of his deep-seated psychological problems. Yes, Larry, you're the only one. And you're certainly a pillar of strength.

Am I the only one who saw weakness when President Obama and his departing chief of staff Rahm Emanuel gave each other a big, fat, full-bore hug following their speeches at the resignation event in the White House’s East Room on Friday?

Remember, this is on global television. And it has to do with the very top of the United States government. Our friends and enemies were all watching.

I think the hug lacked dignity. It did not send a message of American power and forcefulness. So I fret about the reaction around the world to this kind of fraternity-like emotionalism in full public view.

Why not just a dignified, stand-up, serious handshake? That’s what Reagan would have done. A strong handshake shows friendship, respect, and even affection. But a big fat hug seems to go over the line.

Perhaps I’m overreacting to this. But when it comes to the presidency and the behavior of our top leaders, I think the image we want to send at home and abroad is one of serious strength of purpose. Not some kind of collegiate squeeze. Somehow the Obama-Emanuel embrace seemed demeaning — to the presidency, to our officialdom, and to our strength of purpose.

Poor weak, helpless America, about to be brought down by the Islamic insects, Gulliver style. If only it were 198X again, & Morning in America. And if only Larry could still get the good blow. Dude, we'd be back on top of the world!

You can not find a better way to spend a Sunday evening than cleaning sewer water from your kitchen floor, moving the refrigerator all over the kitchen, & trying to fix the outlet the plumber effed up when unplugging his snake.

Sink started backing up again. Plumber arrived & snaked the shit thereout some ten mins. later. Now drains well. And there's water all over the kitchen floor. Again.

Murder plans nonetheless on hold, although waiting for specific incidents to justify the torturing & death of literal rent-seekers is a chump's game. You don't need specifics, just will. (A weapon can help, but bare-hands murder is often more satisfying. As is a hot-lead enema.)

We promise you a minimum of one death at the hands of another (That's us!!): The landlord, the manager, or both. Look at this (literal) shit:

NB: Brown stuff on floor is SHIT, not part of the tiles.

NEWS FLASH: Seems to have stopped, an hr. after it started. This does not mean landlord boy is off the hook. Indeed, he may be hanging by his sickly flesh on a hook for quite some time. What will knowledge of anesthesiology do for you then, Doc? (Second time we've enjoyed a croaker as a landlord. Whatever alleged good they do is not made up for by the evil done as landlords. Doesn't their bullshit oath apply to anything beyond safeguarding their profits?)

WARNING: Thanks to Google, we know where you practice, rent-seeking parasite. And when one's kitchen floor is covered in shit-water, there really isn't much left to live for. Beside revenge, of course! (And justice. Can't forget that.)

We love it when they type a shorter for us. (Not so much when we're surprised by such a sentence & there are liquids near the devil-box. Is there insurance for that?) And it is cute when they pretend to be "mature." ("Grown-ups in charge again," & all that.)

Conservatism is a fully mature, broad-based set of principles and ideas that form a coherent whole.

It's mostly babble about splitters, independents, meat to the base, yada. As expected from a pharmaceutical chemist/freelance author going on about religion & politics, though we will begrudge Mr. Dunkin some credit for accuracy of perception here:

In short, the pool of independents who are generally sympathetic to fiscally conservative ideas, but who are concurrently unsympathetic to socially conservative ideas, is probably not anywhere near as large as it is claimed to be. This is a lot of the reason why the Libertarian Party doesn’t have much appeal.

That they aren't as big a group of assholes as they could be? Surprising, but true, at least in this context. But as one might expect, he doesn't know when to shut up.

This isn’t just my opinion, either. The Tea Parties are the exemplary expression of fiscal conservative activism. Yet these same Tea Parties have had no problem whatsoever in supporting candidates who are extremely socially conservative, such as Mike Lee, Christine O’Donnell, Joe Miller, Ken Buck, Carl Paladino, and Rand Paul, as some chagrined left-wingers have noticed. Why? Because the people driving this movement, and the resurgence of conservative activism in general, are across-the-board conservatives who, while understanding that fiscal issues are the order of the day, aren’t disturbed by the social side of conservatism, and it’s highly doubtful that they’d want to toss it into the garbage can. There seems to be little to no evidence that “independents” have been driven away by these socially conservative candidates.

Take just as long as you need to recover from the reference to NY's Repub. goober candidate Paladino as extremely socially conservative. One might imagine that Paladino should really be disturbing to social conservatives, but we suppose hypocrisy is one of the prices to be paid for mature coherent wholes.

Conservatism is a movement. We shouldn’t have fiscal conservatives splintering off and undermining social conservatives, just because they don’t like social conservative issues as much as social conservatives do, or vice versa. Both groups should accept the place of defense conservatives at the table as well, knowing that both fiscal and social issues might not be this group’s cup of tea.

Odd, innit, that conservative defense policy is liberal, drunken-sailor style spending on invasions & occupations? A mere sop to the neo-conservatives, but it's revealing of the cognitive dissonance required to keep the pole up under their big conserva-tent, where fiscal conservative means "No government assistance for people who need it; military spending, however, is questioned only by internal subversives & union members, so let's appropriate some more money for Homeland Security," which is quickly echoed by the social conservatives. After all, what good will the new sodomy laws do if there's no faith-based apparatus to enforce them?

Take the issues surrounding abortion, for instance: is ending taxpayer subsidies for abortion clinics a socially conservative move, or a fiscally conservative one? The either/or question doesn’t make much sense, because, as Chris Christie just demonstrated, it is in reality both. What about abortion in general? Social conservatives obviously have no problem recognizing the rightness of protecting the sanctity of innocent life. Why couldn’t fiscal conservatives observe that each aborted baby now means less potential entrepreneurship, economic growth, and job creation in the future, and be concerned about the long-term implications?

If not for abortions, then, there would be even more Americans out of work then are now; Americans having jobs, especially ones that pay adequately, does not increase the wealth of the deserving wealthy.

What about welfare? Fiscal conservative arguments tell us that reducing the welfare rolls and getting people back to work, as the Republicans did in the 1990s, will lead to saving taxpayer monies, greater prosperity, and economic growth. Why can’t this argument fit hand-in-glove with the social conservative observation that much of what drives the demand for welfare in the first place are things like the breakdown of the nuclear family, the rise of single parenthood (especially female), the decline of Judeo-Christian moral standards, and the like? Addressing the social concerns essentially means you are addressing the fiscal as well. Two facets, same gem.

The coherent whole: The (Clinton? No?) economic boombubble of the 1990s? The result of Republicans (Clinton? Who?) cutting "welfare" & forcing the lazy bums back to work. Let us offer some of that vaunted common sense reactionaries claim for themselves: Pretty fucking hard to get off "welfare" & get a job when unemployment is around 10%, decline of Judeo-Christian moral standards & single women bearing children notwithstanding. (More babies: Good. More children of [FEMALE!] single parents: Bad. Coherent?)

We were also disappointed by lack of recognition of the moral hazards of Social Security & Medicare anywhere in the article. Could a pharmaceutical chemist (Tim Dunkin is a pharmaceutical chemist by day and a freelance author by night, writing about a wide range of topics on religion and politics at www.theblogmocracy.com.) set aside some of his core small government principles & Judeo-Christian moral standards to profit from the misery of others?

And yet, the PJ People are shocked that the lamestream media doesn't jump all over their fantasies.

Follow straight to Hell!

E-Z 4 U

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